Claire Messud, A DREAM LIFE

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[1:13]Claire Mysud is the author of a dream life

[1:16]She's also the author of many other books including the bestselling novels the emperors children which by the way

[1:22]I read and loved the woman upstairs also read that and the burning girl

[1:26]She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard University

[1:31]You may have heard of it all proceeds from the publication of her new novel a dream life

[1:35]Go to wires an Australian wildlife rescue organization

[1:39]Welcome Claire. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss a dream life in your whole life and

[1:45]Them first children everything else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here

[1:51]I was so excited when this new book came out because I read the emperors children with my book group

[1:56]Before I did any of this stuff when I was just like a hardcore reader, which is what I usually was

[2:01]But I remember that's so well and just having the book next to my bed for so long and

[2:06]Delving so deep into those characters and I remember scenes in my head and anyway, so I was very excited when when your new book came out

[2:13]Especially because it's real not not even a fraction as long as the last like

[2:18]Well, they're gonna call books in between but this this one

[2:21]You know this one is short and in fact, you know it does say I think they call it a novel

[2:26]But but in my mind it wasn't a vella. I'm a big believer in the novella

[2:30]I you know, I don't know if you are as I am a fan of Alice Monroe the short story writer and and she always

[2:38]Or she certainly at once one time said, you know, I I I pity novelists because I I fit everything. I want to say into

[2:46]30 pages which sort of

[2:49]You know seems the ideal. I mean the novel is a bit longer than that

[2:52]But I feel like how great if you can say if you can fit a whole novel into a story wonderful, you know

[2:58]So as a reader. I really love it a kind of shorter form. I do

[3:02]I was actually just talking last night

[3:04]I did an event with Annabelle Moynihan who wrote

[3:07]Norah goes off script and she said her first chapter that was 90 pages and she told all her writer friends

[3:12]She's like I wrote my novel. It's done. It's 90 pages

[3:15]They're like that's not a novel and she's like and then she said she went and bought the bridges of medicine county

[3:20]And was like that's 90 pages too and everybody read that book and that was a book so

[3:25]You know, right? I'm like who gets to decide. What's a novel? What's not a novel? What's you know?

[3:30]I mean, I I think that about about all sorts of categories that seem to me

[3:34]More about publishers trying to reach readers rather than about the things themselves, you know, yes

[3:41]Also, you know, nobody has time these days for anything

[3:45]It's like if we're going to argue for reading which I am and then how great to have a shorter

[3:52]A shorter alternative which is just as impactful like who's to say that's least less valuable

[3:59]You know, I think it's probably more it might fit in more with your lifestyle. So anyway, if it's reading and it's a story

[4:07]And it's a connection, you know labels aside. I'm with you. I'm totally with you. I mean, you know, it's like it's a meal better if it's bigger

[4:18]I mean, yes

[4:20]necessarily

[4:22]Really depends. It's true. No, it's not always better. No, especially lunch. I don't like the glitches

[4:27]But anyway, okay. Well, why don't you talk about where this particular

[4:32]Novella novel whatever we want to call it so came from and like why write this now and your general

[4:39]over

[4:40]So so the sort of extraordinary thing is that I didn't write this now. So oh, okay

[4:45]So about 20 years ago, I published a book of

[4:49]Novella's and there were two Novella's in that book and and in my mind they were going to be three and then I had given this to

[4:56]To someone to read to a writer who was you know older and more established and who was very nice and but he said it hasn't a plot

[5:03]You know, it's not enough happens and so then I was ashamed of it and I didn't show it to my

[5:09]It didn't show it to my agent. I didn't show it to my editor. I put it in a drawer

[5:12]And what happened which I find sort of serendipitous is that a couple of years ago

[5:17]Gemma Barrell who set up tabletails

[5:20]And I had met her because she used to run this Sydney writers festival and she had invited me to attend that now like eight years ago

[5:27]But she wrote and she said I'm doing this thing you wouldn't happen to have

[5:30]a shortish novel

[5:32]Like who has a shortish novel and in the drawer. I was like

[5:37]But but but she said my hope is that it will that people will be willing to do this

[5:41]And donate the proceeds to charity

[5:44]And for me suddenly I hadn't I mean she was in Australia, right? And I had this Novella in a drawer

[5:50]novel in a drawer that that was set in Australia and I was like

[5:55]That that's what are the odds?

[5:58]One of the odds and and I said well listen see what you think you may feel as my

[6:03]As as my friend did that it all those years ago that it doesn't have enough plot or whatever

[6:08]But if you'd like it

[6:10]I would love to give it, you know for this for this venture and for the and the proceeds

[6:14]I'll go to saving wildlife, you know to the wires rescue

[6:17]So that it's it's an organization that saves wildlife from the wildfires in Australia, which are really

[6:23]Bad scene

[6:25]So there is I mean I think there is for me this funny thing that it isn't up just now

[6:29]But it's still when I took that of the drawer and read it

[6:31]I was like oh, I'm still you I still believe in this

[6:35]I still have my heart in this and and that's in part because it's

[6:38]I think based a little on my childhood so so it's trying to imagine what it was like for my mother as a as a sort of

[6:47]You know stay at home mom in the early 70s and and in that time

[6:53]many many a wife and mom packed up and went where her husband's job took them and had to begin again

[7:00]And I think for my mother to be told and now we're moving to Australia

[7:04]Was really like what?

[7:07]You know, that's 50 years ago basically it was it really seemed far away

[7:11]You couldn't you know the telephone calls were difficult

[7:14]Travel was very lengthy and expensive

[7:16]So it really was I mean it wasn't quite like 1800 setting up on the sailing ship

[7:20]But it was really a huge move and and and I would you know

[7:24]That's what I was trying to imagine was what was

[7:27]That like for not I mean it's a fictional character. It's not my mom

[7:30]But for somebody like that, you know to be leaving behind everything

[7:35]They knew and all the context all the sort of threads that make you who you are

[7:39]Or that you believe make you who you are the connections and the friendships and the you know

[7:43]The deli that you know and the you know and the you know and the post office that you use and the doctor

[7:48]Who's been your doctor since your 18 like all those things vanish and in your beginning again and and in this case

[7:54]She she sort of gets caught up in it in inventing a persona that isn't necessarily

[8:00]That close to who she might otherwise be

[8:04]I feel like travel in the quote olden days

[8:08]I mean it was like you were off the grid completely no matter where you were

[8:12]Like we would go away for spring break and I would be like I can't wait to

[8:16]Read you night with my friends

[8:17]And I would get off the airplane and run to the closest

[8:20]Payphone and like call them from the payphone like why couldn't I have just called them from wherever I was

[8:24]But I don't know there was something about like being home and then you could be in touch again

[8:28]And when you were gotten so sometimes I am even like well

[8:31]I can't get in touch with so and so because I know she's traveling to Italy

[8:33]And I'm like she's probably checking her email like every two seconds anyway

[8:37]But they're still that lingering like oh, she's away

[8:40]So do you still have that?

[8:42]And probably totally. I mean and it's true anytime a friend leaves the country

[8:45]And like well I'll text her when she gets back exactly exactly

[8:50]She still has cell service in Sweden. I mean come on. I know it's exactly the same

[8:54]It's like yeah, I can't seem to let that one go

[8:57]But your character

[8:58]I mean she also has this massive house to take care of like they move into this beautiful

[9:02]Place that is really hard for her to manage herself and she has two two kids right

[9:07]Okay, read this a little bit ago

[9:09]She's two kids and she's this massive house and she's trying to find like a house cleaner and like randomly recruits this young

[9:15]Girl who's like doesn't know what she's doing either and you know

[9:18]It's also sort of the trappings of

[9:21]Privilege doesn't always make it so great

[9:23]Like you think from the outside

[9:24]Maybe that having this massive beautiful house is so perfect and yet she can't seem to

[9:29]She can't be overwhelming. She can't manage it. She can't keep it clean

[9:32]She can't and so she's she's really stressed out and yet

[9:36]To others it looks like the perfect life and I love that

[9:40]Peak inside to say like you know

[9:42]It's nothing is just exactly what it seems you know

[9:45]You don't know what's going on inside anyone's house

[9:48]Totally totally and I also think I mean for me and my head the part of the story was that the people

[9:53]She comes to know best or encounter most other people she's employing to help her right

[10:00]It's actually, she's building this kind of fortress around herself of, you know, there's the house comes with a gardener. They have to know the gardener and she doesn't really get on with the gardener so well.

[10:10]And then like as part of her husband's job, she has to give parties so there's a caterer.

[10:14]And then she hires this housekeeper to live in who she thinks, wow, this is she's great. She's going to be my friend.

[10:28]And they are friends, but that woman's totally her own weird person. And I think for me and my head, that woman who's name is Simone, right.

[10:40]She, she's living much more the life she wants, like she's living life on her own terms.

[10:46]Not necessarily fully straightforward terms, but she's, she's totally living life on her own terms.

[10:53]And she, she leaves, she leaves, she leaves in the dead of night.

[10:58]Yeah. And, and I think, you know, the idea is like, oh, how terrible. She's not fulfilling her role, but in my head at the same time, she's not fulfilling her role, but like she's like, ring her thing, you know, whereas, whereas,

[11:12]Allison, the, the, the main characters, you know, she's kind of, she's pretty constrained by, by all of this stuff. And, and, and, and has been made by all of them, like by convention.

[11:26]Like all of these people are like, this is what you need to do. You need to hire a housekeeper. You need to do this. You need to have this kind of party. You need to wear these clothes.

[11:34]I feel like we're, we're all of us in our lives in varying degrees involved in versions of that.

[11:40]I'm interestingly just reading a, a novel that's being translated from French by a woman who was a lawyer. She comes from a very fancy French family. She's a lawyer married with a child.

[11:51]And at some moment, like eight years ago, she, she like chucked it all over, including being a lawyer.

[11:57]She's now queer and she cut off all her hair. She got tattoos. And like, she, she lives on the margins in the tiny studio and, you know, hardly has enough money and she just all of the things like nice clothes and car, but she just chucked it over.

[12:12]And I'm so, it's so interesting to read that because, because you realize, well, that's really courageous, not just, not just for herself, right, but in the eyes of the world, right, that, that we're always navigating both our, our inner selves and, and then the eyes of the world, like what would it mean to live in that big house and, and let the weeds grow up, you know,

[12:36]to six feet, you know, and, and the windows get really dirty and never changed the laundry, like never watched a lot of people with that mean, you know, everybody would be whispering.

[12:45]Well, and I, I mean, I think only certain personality types could handle that.

[12:50]Yeah, like, I would not be able to handle that. I like, that would give me so much anxiety to see all that dirt. Like I would be on my, I would just be scrubbing me to me too.

[12:59]And so, I mean, but it's, it's a really interesting question, like, would, would your five year old self have felt that, or were you sort of trained, like, is that an innate, are you trained over time to be that person?

[13:12]We don't know. We can't find out.

[13:14]Actually, I think I was much more comfortable with mess and I was younger because I have this distinct memory when I would come in like from Switzerland the summer time and like throw my towel somewhere.

[13:23]I would say things like, you have to take care of this house. Like, you can't just throw your towels everywhere. And I'm like, but it's our house. Like, why can I not put my towel somewhere is and don't we live here?

[13:33]Like, why does it have to be so perfect all the time. So, so yeah, maybe I'm going to scratch that and and say this is something I've created my own monster. So, or a series of circumstances, you know, parents school,

[13:48]college life, right? And also, like, when you have to deal with the mess yourself. It's like, no, it's not nice. I don't like it.

[13:57]But you, I mean, to your point, you are very much judged. Like, if somebody were to come over in your house was filthy and unkempt, like, that would be a reflection on you.

[14:08]Right.

[14:09]Yes, yes. My house is a total mess. So, I'm looking at your room. You're using very clean out. I make a distinction though like messy and dirty. I'm not dirty. I'm just.

[14:21]Yeah, that's totally different.

[14:23]Totally different. There are piles of books everywhere, but I dust the piles of books.

[14:28]But that's great. That's that's just aesthetic. That's an aesthetic choice.

[14:33]I'm all for clutter matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we're reading, you know, there's that. I mean, I feel I feel you. I don't know if you cited it before. There's a wonderful line from the writer Rebecca West about a hundred years ago.

[14:46]And she said, a house unclean is better than a life and lived. I like that. Yes. Well, you can get caught in the trap of just it's almost like a naval gazing right if you're just too much cleaning.

[14:58]And making things perfect. Then how do you break out of that and be unprinked.

[15:03]Anyway, and come out with a develop perhaps.

[15:07]How can we go back for just two seconds? Like, how did you get your start writing? How did you know you wanted to be a writer?

[15:15]I think I always I love stories as a kid, you know, and I loved being read to and then when I could read as like, Oh my God, I can read. I can just take the stories and run, you know, I can.

[15:26]I was always the kid in the back of the car reading or the kid, you know, my mother.

[15:31]I remember my mother yelling at me because she thought I was sleeping in and she thought she was being really nice and letting me sleep in, but I've been awake since six in the morning reading a book in my bed and you know, I was that kid.

[15:40]So, so when they discovered pretty early that that stories were not like rocks and trees like that they hadn't always been there, you know, I that people made them up as like, Oh, that's a thing we can do.

[15:54]So then the question was always how do you, you know, how do you find a way to eat and have a roof over your head, you know, and and and do that. So, you know, that which, which still working on that, you know, but.

[16:08]What did you like, what was your first break.

[16:11]So I wrote my first novel I'm I'm an MFA drop out.

[16:16]And I had started as an undergrad as some stories about us some characters and then I was trying that into a novel I started an MFA and it was at Syracuse and my now husband was in London and I was lonely and back to the, you know, pre internet like it was far and it was hard.

[16:35]and went back to London and and I got a job, you know, if like this is really this was really the the sort of.

[16:42]Moment of great good fortune is that I like I got a job working on a newspaper, the guardian newspaper, I was a sort of junior person on what was called I don't know if it still exists, the women's page, which, which wasn't recipes and knitting it was.

[16:55]It had been started in the 20s as a sort of feminist thing and it was very interesting, you know, it was interviews with with politicians and and peace activists and you know.

[17:04]And also writers and and the boss was my editor was not that interested herself and she, so she handed me the writer stuff.

[17:13]And it meant that I got to know a bunch of sort of publicists and editors around town because I was they were sort of pitching to me for pieces in the newspaper and.

[17:23]And when I finished my novel there were several of them who said can I have a look have a look and so the woman who stole my British editor who's about my age liked it well enough to.

[17:34]My first novel law enough to publish it which was wonderful I was thinking, you know, at that time my agent.

[17:39]She and my agent were going out and I always think that if they if they hadn't been going out, I would never have been published, but you know.

[17:50]Oh, that's so funny, oh my gosh, and when you wrote just because I have just because I remember loving and for a student so much tell me about writing that and the process of that book and.

[18:01]We've been together all those different like, how did you go about that like what and and is your process the same does it course through all of the different books like.

[18:11]There you right how you write how you out, you know, all of that in terms of process sure so so you know that book I had started a novel and I was really.

[18:20]Kind of struggling with that and I had and I had a baby so in July of 2001 I had a baby and then in September of 2001 there was 911 and my novel which was set in New York.

[18:31]Young people was like wow I can't write the novel I thought I was going to write and I had to there was there was sort of it.

[18:38]I think the better part of a year, you know where I didn't know whether I whether to write fiction at all, I mean I also had a little baby.

[18:45]She's now she's turning 21 next week so and I started some things, you know, my husband is usually he's just like keep going, you know, he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't say the beginning perhaps terrible usually.

[18:57]The stuff I was starting at that one he was like that don't don't don't continue with that don't know no no not that one.

[19:04]So I sort of like three three kind of totally abortive attempts and then I went back to these characters and I started again and I in a funny way I had more compassion, you know, for them because I felt like history.

[19:19]I was just hideous blow right that that yeah maybe they were self absorbed or or kind of you know I don't know vain in certain ways or whatever but but like rural people and and and I didn't need to kind of.

[19:33]I didn't need to be satirical I mean I feel there's satirical elements in the novel but I didn't need to I didn't need to.

[19:40]To be satirical like I had compassion for them they were totally real to me in light of you know I think made more so by the tragedy of the world and and the thing I would say about writing it is then I had another child so I was like you know you know how it is I was like I don't even remember.

[19:57]I was right little dribs and drabs the chapters.

[20:00]that novel are really short.

[20:01]Because that's what I could manage.

[20:03]A short chapter, I could keep my focus on it.

[20:06]Before, I'd always been somebody who wrote

[20:08]and then I'd go back over it and over it.

[20:10]And by the time I finished it,

[20:11]there'd been like 40 drafts of something.

[20:14]No, no, this was just like,

[20:16]I gotta keep going, I gotta keep going.

[20:18]I write by hand in a notebook and I, yeah, still.

[20:22]And I had to kind of keep,

[20:26]I just had to keep going forward, right?

[20:28]I couldn't.

[20:29]And that was useful because it made,

[20:32]because I think with kids,

[20:33]you know, you have to do that.

[20:36]You don't have the luxury of time in the same way.

[20:39]For a really long time,

[20:40]you don't have the luxury of time in the same way.

[20:42]And maybe in the digital world,

[20:44]we never again have the luxury of time

[20:46]in the way that we do.

[20:47]Don't say that, please.

[20:49]Do you know what I mean, right?

[20:50]Like there's so much, we're all bombarded so much.

[20:52]So it's like it was a good training for me

[20:55]to learn like you can just keep going.

[20:58]If the world doesn't fall apart and it's okay.

[21:01]Doesn't it?

[21:02]I feel like this scene that I remember

[21:05]the most vividly is this dinner party scene

[21:08]and getting ready for a dinner party.

[21:09]Did I make that up or was that in the beginning of the book?

[21:13]I don't know.

[21:14]I'm gonna have to go back.

[21:16]I have like, I have like this whole apartment in my head

[21:19]and like a couple and it's whole pre-dinner party preparation.

[21:23]But it could be, it's not been a good scene,

[21:26]but it comes immediately.

[21:27]I feel like I'm trying to think if that would be the,

[21:30]I don't know.

[21:31]You're wrong.

[21:31]I'm gonna go back and look, I don't know.

[21:33]I shouldn't even have said anything about that.

[21:35]It was good.

[21:35]It could really be, you know, I have the memory of a sim.

[21:39]It's a long time.

[21:40]Yeah.

[21:41]Well, okay, thanks for going easy on me.

[21:45]Okay, what project is next for you?

[21:47]And then I'll let you get.

[21:49]Well, thank you for asking.

[21:51]Yeah, I am in the middle of a novel

[21:54]that is sort of based on,

[21:56]I've never written anything autobiographical before.

[21:59]And it's not autobiographical in a sense of being about me,

[22:01]but it's a novel that sort of takes the trajectory

[22:04]in my father's life and, and you know,

[22:08]its fiction stuff is made up.

[22:09]But, but his life was odd, you know,

[22:12]in the way I think of many 20th century lives.

[22:15]So, so, you know, the, the world he was born into,

[22:19]he was his, my father's family was Pinwell.

[22:22]They were French colonials in Algeria.

[22:25]And of course, he was born in 1931.

[22:28]And then there was the war.

[22:29]And then after that, there was the war of Algerian independence.

[22:33]And by 1962, Algeria was independent

[22:36]as absolutely should have happened.

[22:39]And, but what it meant was that a lot of people were displaced

[22:41]and had what they thought of as home no longer existed.

[22:46]You know, the, the world that they thought of as home

[22:49]was the vanished world, which happened to so,

[22:51]many people in more dramatic circumstances, of course,

[22:55]in the 20th century.

[22:56]But, but this gave me a sort of, almost coat hanger or a sort

[22:59]of frame on which to, on which to kind of build a straight

[23:02]or shape a straight, because you know, of course,

[23:04]here I am, I'm an American person, you know.

[23:07]And in my frame of reference for everything is so far.

[23:11]And he, he traveled, you know, he, he traveled from that world

[23:16]to, you know, he died in Stanford, Connecticut, you know.

[23:19]So it was a, a long journey.

[23:22]And, and as he was near death, he was not religious,

[23:24]but his sister was, my aunt was very religious

[23:26]and she wanted somebody to come and give him the last rights.

[23:30]And he said to me, is there somebody who could do it in French?

[23:33]Oh.

[23:35]Because the last time he had any religious involvement,

[23:38]it was when he was young and, and Benjamin, I said,

[23:40]I don't, I don't think so, Daddy, I don't think I can find somebody.

[23:43]But so, you know, it's just that arc is, but I think it's so,

[23:47]is, to me, it feels so, so common of this era.

[23:51]We all move around, you know.

[23:53]Well, that sounds amazing.

[23:56]Thank you Claire.

[23:56]I want to post a picture I think of us wearing our,

[23:59]our identical time.

[23:59]I'm glad to be here.

[24:00]It's great.

[24:01]I feel like we should be on the Caddis website or something.

[24:03]It's sponsors.

[24:04]But anyway, it was lovely chatting with you.

[24:06]Thank you so much.

[24:07]Thank you so much.

[24:07]And, thank you for having me.

[24:09]Thank you so much.

[24:10]Thank you.

[24:11]All right.

[24:11]Have a great day.

[24:12]Thank you.

[24:13]Thank you.

[24:13]Bye.

[24:15]Thanks for listening to this episode

[24:17]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

[24:19]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,

[24:21]at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

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[24:31]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.

[24:32]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.

[24:35]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions

[24:36]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.